Scripps loses one of world's top-ranked chemists

The Scripps Research Institute -- one of the country's most revered science centers -- is continuing to lose some of its best and brightest scholars.

M.G. Finn, one of the world's most highly cited chemists, is leaving TSRI in January to take a position at Georgia Tech. And his colleague, K.C. Nicolaou, might be leaving for Rice University in Houston. The announcement could come as early as Thursday.

TSRI lost geneticist Bruce Beutler last fall, just after he was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Finn, 53, conducts basic research on viruses and molecules that have potential applications in drug development. From 2000 to 2010, Finn published 76 scientific papers that were cited 6,286 times by other scientists, making him the 33rd most highly cited chemist in the world, according to an analysis by Thomson Reuters. Finn ranks ahead of such famed researchers as Harvard's George Whitesides and MIT's Robert Langer.

"Georgia Tech made me an excellent offer, including an opportunity to help them build strength in chemical biology," Finn said by email. "This is an area of basic research that will help their outstanding biomedical engineers develop new medical treatments and diagnostic tools. I am so lucky to have been at Scripps for almost 15 years, and my mission is to bring as much of the Scripps way of doing science as possible to new students and colleagues. Movement of investigators among different institutions is both normal and healthy, and, for me, this new opportunity is exciting. The Scripps Research Institute is, and will remain, a unique and remarkably successful institution."

Nicolaou is famous for synthesizing such things as Taxol, which is widely used in cancer treatment.

The hiring of Finn "will have a great impact on our continued growth in the biosciences. He is really going to lead us in new directions in chemical biology," said Andrew Lyon, the associate chair of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech, which is located in Atlanta.

Lyon said Georgia Tech is beginning work on a large biosciences complex, and that Finn will occupy space in the first new building -- something that Lyon believes influenced his decision to leave Scripps Research.

The recruitment represents a coup for Georgia Tech, which last year hired renowned chemist and nanotechnologist Younan Xia away from Washington University in St. Louis. Such raiding is normal. Last year, Rice University raided UC San DIego for three star faculty members at one time.

In an interview earlier this year, TSRI President Michael Marletta, a former UC Berkeley chemist, was circumspect about such raids. "People come and go. I think if you asked my Berkeley colleagues if they wished I had stayed, the answer would be 'yes,' " he said. "Sometimes people (like me in this case) simply want to try something completely different. I always say that change is fundamentally good. It changes your science. There is intense competition and sometimes it forces you to make tough choices.

"I am also fond of saying, 'If someone isn’t after your faculty, then you don’t have the right faculty.' That said, we work to keep our very best people here.''

But the loss of star faculty can affect an institution's reputation, making it less appealing to graduate students. In 2010, US News and World Report ranked TSRI's graduate program in chemistry as the seventh best in the country, ahead of such schools as UCSD and UCLA.

The loss of Nicolaou could be even more troubling. Scientists say he does the type and caliber work that earns people a Nobel Prize.